Pour an extraordinary cocktail, set out some irresistible nibbles, and you’re ready for a celebration.

My search for the perfect New Year’s Eve libation this year led me to the “PDT Cocktail Book,”: by Jim Meehan (Sterling Epicure, 2011).  Illustrated with Chris Gall’s colorful woodcut engravings, the book is an engaging and often esoteric guide to the artisan cocktails created for the speakeasy-style Manhattan bar, Please Don’t Tell.  It’s such a hit that I couldn’t find a hardback version anywhere so I downloaded the e-book version.

Meehan is known as one of the most innovative mixologists in a new generation of gourmet bartenders.  He builds his drinks from an impressive stock of unusual and hard-to-find ingredients. Just hunting down all the components is a challenge, as writer Jeff Gordiner recounted in the New York Times earlier this month.

We couldn’t track down many of the special spirits and mixers Meehan specifies for his cocktails but we substituted the best ingredients available in local stores.  The results, if not absolutely authentic, were always impressive, with a complexity of flavor rarely found in home-mixed drinks.

The cosmopolitan made with Hangar One Buddha’s Hand Vodka, which is distilled nearby in Alameda, was a perfect balance of citrus and tart cranberry flavors with just a touch of sweetness. Meehan gives credit to Cheryl Cooke of Miami, Fla. who is believed to have created the first cosmo in the mid-1980s.

To complement the cosmo, I’ve been playing around with a new cracker recipe combining the Southern classics of pimento cheese spread and cheese straws.  I’ve added minced pimentos to the usual sharp cheddar and ditched the cookie press in favor of a simpler slice-and-bake shaping technique.  The dough can be stored in the freezer and baked off at the last minute.

With this cocktail in your glass and these crackers on your plate, the prospects for 2012 will look very good indeed.

Most Oktoberfest menus are pretty predictable — oceans of beer, mountains of sausage, sauerkraut, and maybe freshly baked pretzels.

Santa Cruz, though, takes pride in leaning off-center.  The music at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery’s fifth annual Sausagefest last weekend was country.  Frauleins sported elaborate tattoos with their flirty barmaid drindls.  And the popular Penny Ice Creamery served beer ice cream.

There weren’t a lot of takers  for the Devout Stout-flavored ice cream early in the evening, but I couldn’t resist.  A scoop in a pint jar with a little of the same beer was the best thing I had all night.  It was thick, creamy and lightly sweet with flavors of coffee, caramel and a pleasantly bitter hint of burnt sugar.  Even before I left, I knew I was going to have to try to make it at home.

It turns out that beer ice cream isn’t that rare.  Mentions can be found all over the Internet.  Most of the recipes don’t sound very appealing, however.  Some don’t bother to cook the eggs.  Others add molasses or chocolate to round out the beer flavors.

I decided to riff off a basic French-style vanilla ice cream.  First, I reduced some good dark beer with a little brown sugar to make a syrup and cook off most of the alcohol.  Then I substituted the beer syrup for some of the cream in the formula.  It turned out even better than I hoped.

The secret to good beer ice cream, of course, is good beer.  A can of Bud just won’t do. But any well-crafted stout or porter is worth a try.

The artisan Devout Stout is a wonderful, dark and deeply flavored brew.  I would have used it if we could have found any in all the usual places.  When we didn’t, I turned to that reliable supermarket standby, Guiness Extra Stout, for the first batch.

It was very nice although a little rough around the edges.  If I hadn’t tasted the Devout Stout ice cream, I would have declared it a winner.

Still, I knew the ice cream could be better.  So I snagged some Black Butte Porter, my husband’s favorite, for the next try.  Smoother and more nuanced, it was just right.

The only thing better than this ice cream is a float made with the same beer.  Give it a try. You’ll be amazed.

The way this summer has gone, it looked like there never was going to be a good time to try out my idea for adult versions of the commercial (and trademarked) Popsicle.  But the weather seems to have settled into a nice run of warm days at last and I’ve been experimenting with making ice pops with a kick.

These frozen bars are milder versions of a couple of refreshing summer cocktails made with fresh juice.  It took a little tweaking to get the flavor right while reducing the alcohol enough that the pops would freeze.  They’re supposed to be fun, not seriously intoxicating, anyway.

For my models, I drew on Lynchburg Lemonade, named after the Kentucky home of the Jack Daniels distillery, and a generic peach daiquiri recipe.  I substituted lemon juice and homemade simple syrup for sour mix in the potent lemonade recipe and stuck to fresh peaches rather than “peach-flavored” liqueurs in the daiquiri.

The results are fresh tasting and fruity—with just enough liquor to make the flavors more interesting.

These are easy to whirl together in the blender and freeze in the ice pops molds readily available in most cookware stores these days.  Let them freeze overnight and you’re ready for an impromptu party, complete with frozen drinks.

Sangria has suffered from a bum rap for far too long.   This light and refreshing Spanish sipper has been ruined so many times by too much alcohol and an overload of sugar that most wine lovers won’t give it a second thought.

Yet, when simply made with a young and fruity red wine, a little citrus and sparkling water to cut the alcohol, a glass of sangria is the ideal drink for a lazy Sunday afternoon with friends. True, it’s not a serious wine, but who wants to be serious all the time. It’s just the thing to go with a bowl of olives or burgers just off the grill.

Most recipes I’ve encountered go wrong with an endless list of ingredients.  More often than not, there’s brandy, perhaps some Cointreau or even gin, all manner of cut-up fruit — from apples and pears to strawberries and pomegranates — plus fruit juice and a generous portion of sugar.  It tastes like juice box punch with a kick.

I knew I had found a recipe for my taste when I stumbled upon this one in “My Nepenthe: Bohemian Tales of Food, Family and Big Sur,” by Romney Steele (Andrews McMeel, 2009).  It’s simple to make and easy to drink with bright citrus flavors playing counterpoint to the wine.

Fruity, inexpensive red wine is what you want for this recipe. It should be something you would enjoy drinking on its own but not too complex or tannic.  I use my favorite Big House Red, a box wine long on character and short on subtlety, as well as a fresh French rosé bottled under the La Ferme Julien label and sold at Trader Joe’s.

Mix it up, let the flavors meld in the fridge for at least three hours — overnight is better — and serve over ice with a big splash of soda.   ¡Salud!

2010 has been a pretty tough year given all the nasty political battles and continuing economic uncertainty.  I, for one, will be happy to bid it adieu Friday night.

To toast the arrival of 2011, I’ve come up with a new cocktail — one that brings together the old and the new with a dash of gin, a multitude of tiny bubbles and the lively spark of pomegranate.  It began as a French 75, the World War I favorite of the Lost Generation of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

My family is calling this variation the Ruby Bullet.  Paired with hot, puffy gougeres, it’s bound to enliven any New Year’s Eve celebration.

Just as potent as the French 75, which drew its name from a French howitzer, the Ruby Bullet calls for fresh pomegranate juice to replace the lemon juice in the original.  If you can’t find freshly squeezed juice and don’t want to prepare your own, pomegranate liqueur will work in a pinch.

We experimented, too, with substituting vodka for the gin specified in the version first served at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. Ultimately, though, we decided to stick with gin, which offers a complex  herbal  backdrop for the exotic fruit.   We also opted for inexpensive Spanish cava rather than pricey champagne from France.

Since every cocktail deserves a complementary nibble, I’m also sharing a recipe for black pepper and thyme gougeres.  It comes straight out of “Tartine,” by renowned San Francisco bakers Elisabeth Pruett and Chad Robertson (Chronicle Books, 2006).  One really shouldn’t mess with perfection.

The only change I’ve made is to portion the dough out onto the baking sheets with a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop.   That’s far easier for most home cooks to manage than piping the dough through a pastry bag.  The cheesy puffs bake up beautifully and taste just as great as they look.

A couple of these tasty gougeres and a flute of Ruby Bullet will cast even 2010 in a rosy light.

With Christmas behind us and a new year on the horizon, it’s time to abandon the sweets and concentrate on party fare. Cocktails and savory tidbits are what we need to ring in 2010.

New Year’s Eve calls for something a little more elegant than the usual wine, cheese and crackers — something with sophistication, flavor and flare. My nominees this year are sidecars and freshly baked pastry twists loaded with garlic and extra sharp cheddar.

Although I’m not really a cocktail drinker, I do love a well-made sidecar with its refined balance of cognac and citrus. It’s a classic, dating back to the end of World War I, and it makes me feel worldly and urbane. As one story goes, the drink was named after the motorcycle sidecar in which an American Army captain was driven to a Paris bistro, where the cocktail was his signature tipple.

Aromatic garlic cheese twists are the perfect accompaniment to the tart and fruity cocktail. These tidbits are patterned after the chewy twists, sharp with cheddar and pungent with garlic, sold at Gayle’s Bakery in Capitola. I somehow manage to buy a couple whenever I stop there, no matter what’s on my shopping list.

Gayle’s garlic twists are made with croissant dough, though, and much too large for cocktail party finger food. I’ve shrunk them to little two-bite munchies made with amazingly versatile puff pastry. The texture is delightfully crisp and they sing with garlic and cheese.

Extra sharp cheddar is essential here. Milder cheddar is overpowered by the buttery pastry.

If you want to speed up production, you can make them with commercial puff pastry from the freezer section of the supermarket — preferably the all-butter pastry from Dufour. It’s pricey but delicious, versatile and extremely easy to handle. Just thaw it in the refrigerator before rolling out as directed.

In the interest of saving a few bucks, I made the twists with an almost instant puff pastry pulsed together in a food processor. The recipe comes from Bernard Clayton’s venerable “The Complete Book of Pastry, Sweet and Savory” (Simon & Schuster, 1981) and was passed along to me by my friend, Carolyn Berke, who once worked as a professional baker. It’s so easy, I may never buy commercial dough again.

The secret to the twists is keeping the dough well chilled as you work. If it seems to be getting too soft to handle easily, pop it back into the refrigerator for 15 or 20 minutes, before moving to the next step. Be sure to plan for time to chill the finished twists before baking, too.

You can shape them ahead, place them on the baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate and bake just before the festivities begin.

Serve them with sidecars and you’ll usher 2010 in with style.

Salud!